Friday, October 12, 2007

TOAK - The Duke MBA, Fuqua School of Business

OverviewAs you’re comparing curriculums at business schools around the world, one of the first differences you’ll notice about the Duke MBA is the breadth and depth of our content and the strength of our faculty. Ranked among the top ten business schools in the country in every single functional area rated by BusinessWeek magazine in 2004, Duke offers students excellent education in all aspects of business practice.

This breadth, built on our world-class multi-disciplinary faculty, offers you what we call our Research Advantage — an unparalleled ability to help you go beyond the “basics” and bring the insights of cutting-edge research in all subject areas of relevance to your career.

And with our global focus and the opportunity to concentrate on an area of particular interest within a general management framework, the Duke MBA provides outstanding preparation for a career in today’s complex, multicultural, and multinational business environment.

As a Duke MBA student, you will start the process of developing collaborative leadership and organizational management skills along with a global outlook the moment you step into our program, during the first term “Global Institute”.

You will then dive into a rigorous exploration of the major functional areas in business, gaining a firm foundation in economics, quantitative analysis and statistics, accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, and operations management, while reinforcing your functional skills with additional management communications education.

As you continue in the program, you have the choice of undertaking a wide-ranging general management education designed to suit your individual goals, or of focusing more directly on particular career paths through a variety of inter-disciplinary concentration and certificate opportunities.

FORMAT:Flexible and FocusedDuke MBA courses are taught in six-week terms. This arrangement allows you to take more courses (three or four per term) with the same number of faculty contact hours as in a more traditional system—giving you greater breadth of knowledge without sacrificing depth.

Thanks to this term schedule, you will have taken at least five elective courses by the end of your first year—more if you exempt core courses or elect to take the FleX Term, a two-week winter term with key career electives that help you prepare for summer internship opportunities.

This structure gives you the opportunity to explore a particular area in more depth, which provides a competitive edge as well as additional knowledge to draw upon as you consider, interview for, and then begin your summer internship.

This flexibility continues through your second year, when you can select from a broad menu of elective courses as you move toward job interviews and career choices.

This flexible, yet focused, format with a rich array of courses that are informed by the latest research and business trends offers you the opportunity to gain both the depth needed for early career success and the breadth needed for lifelong success.

The Duke MBA program begins with a three-week-long Global Institute held in August. The newly implemented institute features two core courses—Leadership, Ethics, and Organization and Global Institutions and Environment. The Global Institute begins the process of helping you become a collaborative leader with a deep understanding of the multifaceted global business environment.

With an internationally experienced faculty, a curriculum informed by global business trends, a cosmopolitan student body, and partnerships with leading corporations and public organizations worldwide, your Duke MBA will help you graduate with an international perspective on business that gives you a competitive edge in today’s global economy.

You will also have multiple opportunities to experience business and cultural practices in other countries firsthand through our extensive array of Global Academic Travel Experience (GATE) courses and exchange programs – indeed, most of our students chose to take advantage of these programs.

For more information regarding international coursework and learning opportunities, please visit the International Center

CONCENTRATIONS:Inter-disciplinary DepthThe Duke MBA offers optional specialized Concentrations in all of the major functional areas (such as accounting, decision sciences, finance, management, marketing, operations, and strategic consulting) and in topical areas (such as entrepreneurship, international business, leadership and ethics, and social entrepreneurship). Each concentration identifies a set of electives from which you will choose six courses.

Duke MBA concentrations have a common “4-2” structure, where the concentration typically has four courses in a focal area (e.g., Finance) and two courses from other areas that provide supporting breadth for the focal concentration.

This structure of thoughtful, supporting breadth for the focal concentration is absolutely unique among leading business schools – this interdisciplinary feature connects directly to Duke’s tradition of providing a general management education and our reputation for innovation through collaboration. As organizations work toward improved coordination of organizational activities, so, too, your education should reflect how functional activities and skills can be enriched and strengthened by other perspectives.

Concentrations are not required. You may choose none, one, or a maximum of two concentrations. If you choose two concentrations, think of the first concentration providing depth needed for early career success and the second concentration providing breadth needed for lifelong career success. Note that even if you choose two concentrations, you still have room in your schedule for additional electives to customize your MBA experience for either greater depth or breadth, as needed.

Information regarding concentration offerings can be found here.

No matter your career path, your grounding in the principles and practices of general management coupled with opportunities to specialize in a particular set of skills means that your Duke MBA provides a strategic, global perspective that will serve you well throughout their careers.

CERTIFICATES OF EXCELLENCE:Specialized Depth and BreadthAlong with Concentrations, the Duke MBA offers several intense Certificate of Excellence programs. Certificates of Excellence serve as a complement to Concentrations, allowing you to distinguish yourself with greater depth of course work in a given area. We are introducing new Certificate of Excellence programs in Finance and Marketing that will likely have depth of six to eight courses in addition to the two distribution requirements as in Concentrations, together with demonstration of above-average academic excellence in the chosen area. As a companion to Concentrations, Certificates of Excellence allow you to send a strong signal about your depth, and the quality of your depth, in a single area. At the same time, if you choose this path you are required to take two additional courses, in total, to ensure that depth does not come at the expense of breadth of general management skills and perspectives necessary for lifelong career success.

HEALTH SECTOR MANAGEMENT:A Certificate Program for Fast Track CareersIf you aspire to a business career in the health care industry—whether in pharmaceutical leadership, biotechnology business development, hospital administration, health sector consulting, health sector investment, or other segments of the industry —Duke offers one of the most respected education programs in the world. The HSM program adds a specialized understanding of the unique facets of the health care industry to the general management skills you will acquire in during your core program, teaching you skills you will need to steer your business through the complex issues surrounding health care.